broadcast: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:00
from: Institute of Psychiatry / Maudsley Debates
35 Happily ever after

Speakers

For:

Mr Paul Ormerod, an economist and Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences, writes on a range of topics to include a recent pamphlet on Happiness, Economics & Public Policy.

Dr Rachel Perkins, clinical psychologist, Director of Quality Assurance & User/Carer Experience at an NHS Trust, user of mental health services, and Vice Chair of Rethink.

Against

Professor Lord Richard Layard, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, where he is Head of the Programme on Well-Being, and author of Happiness – Lessons from a New Science.

Dr Carmine Pariante, consultant psychiatrist, Head of the “Stress, Psychiatry and Immunology Lab” at the Institute of Psychiatry, and expert on stress hormones in mental health.

The debate was chaired by Professor Robin Murray from the Institute of Psychiatry.

Summary

At the outset the lecture theatre was packed with an audience holding fairly mixed views. 84 people felt happiness to be overrated, 145 believed it not to be, with 13 people unsure.

Paul Ormerod started by pointing out that happiness is nebulous, and difficult to measure. He described evidence showing that happiness ratings barely fluctuate over time, despite variations in public expenditure, GDP and income inequality. For him happiness is a personal, private affair, and to base public policy on such an immeasurable concept is both ‘dangerous’ and ‘premature’.

Professor Lord Layard instead believes happiness to be the goal of most, and so the criteria by which we should judge a society. He suggested one way to achieve this is to make other people happy - stating ‘your happiness is good for you as well as for me’! He also argued that to view suffering as having an intrinsic value is ‘morally abhorrent’, and our aim should be to create conditions in which people can lead happy lives.

Dr Rachel Perkins feels that we thrive on ‘ups’ and the ‘downs’, and that this variation drives creativity and social change. Quoting Orson Wells, she pointed to the ‘cuckoo clock’ as an example of creativity (or lack of) in a peaceful and democratic nation. She asked whether ‘highs’ would even be meaningful without the ‘lows’? For Rachel, to rid ourselves of the unpleasant would be to ignore part of who we are – regardless of psychiatric diagnosis.

Dr Carmine Pariante argued that happiness is not overrated, but instead depression is underrated. He described how depressed people are so ill that they cannot feel happy or sad. For him, the job of mental health professionals is to use all the available tools to treat depression, and reinstate the beauty of both happiness and sadness, the full range of emotional experience.

Lastly, it was the turn of the audience to put their questions. How to define happiness? Is depression its polar opposite? And just who gains from re-translating and individualising collective, public issues? So was the audience convinced? The proposers gained 10 votes with 94 people deciding happiness is indeed overrated. The happiness proponents lost 25 followers, and this time only 7 people abstained. This left 120 people, the majority of the audience, still opting for happiness.

Or perhaps it was simply a case of “if you’re happy and you know it, raise your hands!”